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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

AT&T announced that it "filed with the Federal Communications Commission its Public Interest Statement regarding its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA. The filing demonstrates the numerous benefits of the merger, including the deployment of 4G LTE network technology to more than 97 percent of the population".

One of the benefits AT&T sees in the merger is (the full document, with its 381 pages, is available here):

"AT&T is using up its spectrum at an accelerating rate, and the wireless broadband revolution is just beginning. Over the next five years, data usage on AT&T’s network is projected to skyrocket as customers “mobilize” all of their communications activities, from streaming HD video and cloud computing to a range of M2M applications like energy management, fleet tracking, and remote health monitoring. In just the first five-to-seven weeks of 2015, AT&T expects to carry all of the mobile traffic volume it carried during 2010".

AT&T explains that it "... has worked tirelessly to address this data explosion through a wide variety of means. For example, it has purchased spectrum on the open market when available and has added thousands of cell sites and additional backhaul capacity to its network grid. AT&T has also deployed distributed antenna systems, 24,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country, and Wi-Fi Hotzones in heavy usage areas—such as Chicago’s Wrigleyville, New York’s Times Square (here) [See below an example for the merged network in New York], and others—to off-load traffic from its mobile network. All told, AT&T invested $21.1 billion in capital expenditures to upgrade its wireless network between 2008 and 2010 [here]".

The press release "AT&T Files Public Interest Statement With FCC on T-Mobile Acquisition" is here and a special site - here.

See also "AT&T CEO Expects "a very significant increase in data throughput in a very short time" - here.